Category: publishing

“Cody’s Books, the legendary Berkeley bookstore that catered to literati nationwide for more than half a century and was firebombed in the 1980s because of its support of the First Amendment, has closed its doors, the victim of lagging sales.”

“In an age when reading for pleasure is declining, book publishers increasingly are counting on their biggest moneymaking writers to crank out books at a rate of at least one a year, right on schedule, and sometimes faster than that.”

All journalists can cop to this: The semicolon allows woozy clauses to lean on each other like drunks for support.

“Organisers said they were experiencing an unprecedented demand for tickets for book festival events. Its website had more than 300,000 hits in its first hour and phone lines took more than 21,000 calls.”

“The self-service machine, which will eventually be installed in 50 stores across the country, offers a choice of around one million titles. The fully-bound books are printed to library quality, including a front cover.”

“Publishers must delicately exploit the middle ground between high and low. Elements of genre writing are often introduced to spice up the ‘literary’ kind and some genres are given credence, their merits discussed. They are reclaimed for seriousness; seriousness is arguably the better for it. Yet one staple of genre fiction, the sentimental, soft-focus romance novel, remains apparently beyond rescue.”

“I can’t stand second-hand books. For me, as a literary experience, they are akin to sloppy seconds, a salad bar in a staff canteen at the end of a hot weekday, or a recently-vacated cubicle in a public toilet. Let’s be clear: I don’t merely have a mild preference for buying brand-new. No, I’m digestively squeamish about used books.”

“The admission of the leading psychiatrist Raj Persaud of a ‘cut and paste error’ – ie substantial plagiarism – in one of his books will come as no surprise to some academics whose grumbles about their work being pillaged by more starry writers have been getting louder by the week.”

“Four years and many real books later, the R&J Book Club accounts for 26% of the sales of the top 100 books in the UK, and Amanda Ross, the club’s creator and book selector, is the most powerful player in British publishing. Now, though, the club faces a crisis.”